Laurie Anderson has many voices — breathy, choral, sonorous, distorted — and she directs them all at America. This slow yet powerful show examines a changed US of A through the eyes of an appalled yet analytical New Yorker (or as she speak-sings “a self-motivated spy”) . Long acknowledged as a major cultural force in her homeland (whatever that now means), her recent marriage to rock god Lou Reed must have been some happening.

With her gamine haircut, twinkling eyes and dimples, 61-year-old Anderson was a benign (and wedding ring-less) presence inside her computer corral, wielding a toy-sized electric violin and deploying her effects-laden voices on a stage dotted with votive candles. But after a shimmering opening monologue that recalled Aristophanes’s The Birds, her fury at American obsessions with security, control and the so-called war on terror became obvious.

Backed by a spectacle-wearing trio of erstwhile jazzers on keyboards, guitar and viola, Anderson delivered her evocative — if occasionally soporific — song cycle over a foundation of groove electronics.

“There’s no place for freedom when war is here to stay,” she sang in her default soprano, flicking a foot pedal to conjure beats like choppers’ wings. The verse-chorus of Only An Expert and a mock paean to “Underwear Gods” on city billboards led to a moving encore: Anderson on nothing but keening violin, surrounded by flickering light, her eyes locked onto her audience.